I agree with Vicki, I actually find these lists not more biased than any other best of lists. And I don’t think this is necessarily big corporate behind it (sorry but Classical just is extremely niche, big business doesn’t care), but every reviewer (including my own little efforts in this space) has some natural preferences. Gramophone for example has a clear preference for UK artists, but I don’t even think it’s a nationalistic thinking issue, it may just be down to increasing familiarity.

I’ll be publishing my own best of 2017 lists in a bit, they will as biased as everybody else’s, just in a different way.

Well, since you are publishing “your own list” (and who cares but you) that makes you a bit biased, doesn’t it? And you are strikingly wrong about the nationalism evident in Gramophone, and your thinking is so muddled I cannot make out what this means: “but I don’t even think it’s a nationalistic thinking issue, it may just be down to increasing familiarity.” Pray tell us what “increasing familiarity” is. On the other hand, your answer can likely be filed with your proposed list, in the “circular file”.

Oh, please. These lists are more diverse than that. And the Forbes List you single out for being a corporate shill isn’t less diverse than the rest. The labels presented on that list since it exists (excluding Re-issues) are:

That’s three major labels in 42 choices. A real shill for corporate America (or whatever), huh?

And even if Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Schubert are present, so are a lot of composers most people have not even heard of. I dont’ understand these broad, anger-fuelled accusations apparently based on presumptions how things must be (in order to to fulfill the prejudice), rather than on what the facts are.

You also don’t seem to understand that the linked albums in the story come from: Warner Classics, DG, and Sony Classics, giant international corporations whose business it is to promote their artists and sell their records. That fact is not in dispute but you avoid it.

And you are also factually wrong on rhe broadness of composers. I think one composer (Philip Glass) is on one of the lists presented and that’s it for American composers.

Forbes is Forbes: it represents large international corporations. If you can’t see that, then…..

There is more to broadmindedness than including American composers, isn’t there? Should they get a quota or is it an inherent sign of close-mindedness if one does not love releases of American composers best, at the end of the year?

I can see what Forbes is and I can see what the labels are, that were recommended on their site. You criticized these lists based on a presumption and I merely pointed out that the presumption doesn’t seem to translate into facts in that case. It is you who seem to be doing the avoiding, by simply repeating your accusations.

And why are you being so aggressive and unpleasant? Is that necessary?

It’s no coincidence that the linked albums come from: Warner Classics; Deutsche Grammophone; and Sony Classics. They’re all trying to do the same thing: sell records and build their star system. Forbes is Forbes, a voice of corporate America as is the Chicago Tribune, “America’s newspaper for Americans”.

As to the same artists appearing on these various lists, ask yourself, is this surprising, given who is paying for the ads in most cases (yes, the record companies). And far from containing a vast assortment of classical music, they hew to the old and tried (because this formula has made money for them in the past). For instance, Bach (do we really need yet another recording of the Goldberg variations when on YouTube it shows hundreds of them in various forms and from pianists like Glenn Gould, Daniel Barenboim, Andras Shiff, Grigorij Lipmanovič Sokolov, Rudolf Serkin, Tatiana Nikolayeva, Rosalyn Turek, Wilhelm Kempff, Igor Levit, Zhu Xiao Mai, Grigory Sokolov, Maria Tipo, Claudio Arrau, Murray Perahia, Eunice Norton, Karl Richter, Beatrice Rana, Ferruccio Busoni, Nicholas Angelich, Maria Yudina, Andrea Padova, Vladimir Feltsman, Peter Serkin, Ante Sladolojev, Kimiko Ishizaka, Clive Swansbourne, Angela Hewitt, Marta Espinos, Alexandre Thiroud, Sviatoslav Richter (and this is just a partial list of the pianists; there is also an enormous group of harpsichordists and artists on other instruments). What will we learn that is new from this artist being pushed by Warner Classics?

On most of these lists, there are zero American composers. None. It’s the same suspects: Beethoven, Bach, Sibelius, Mozart, Wagner etc. And do we we need yet another version of Lohengrin (and this coming from Swedish National Radio)?

If classical music is in trouble, and it is, it is because the “gatekeepers” want people to listen to the same music again and again. It’s not working.